Not all 4G is created equal
It should be noted that AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), Leap Wireless International Inc. (Nasdaq: LEAP), MetroPCS Inc. (NYSE: PCS), Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) and Verizon Wireless all run some form of 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network in the U.S.

T-Mobile USA , meanwhile, uses a fast form of 3G technology called High-Speed Packet Access-Plus (HSPA+), which it markets as 4G. AT&T also sells HSPA+ as 4G alongside its younger — but growing — LTE network.

T-Mobile is expecting to introduce LTE in key metropolitan areas in 2013.

Not all 4G is created equal. AT&T and Verizon have wider radio channels to deploy LTE technology than the smaller operators do, so those networks tend to be the fastest.

As you’ll see, AT&T or T-Mobile’s HSPA+ networks can give the 4G networks a run for their money, particularly in the cases of Leap and MetroPCS, because those carriers have much less spectrum — meaning smaller channels overall — to deploy 4G LTE in.

Verizon also has a significantly larger 4G LTE footprint than any of its rivals. As of late October 2012, Verizon has 419 LTE markets live, AT&T has 77, Sprint has 32 and MetroPCS has 13 cities and parts of Florida, while Leap just has two cities up.

* I don’t see them really justifying the comment on HSPA+ networks giving 4G networks a run for the their money. That is unless the slow results at 3.x Mb/s are all 3G networks for those “slower” areas.

On a boat do you really need to have 4G on a router shared onto the boat? If it was faster then your crew and guests would use up your monthly data allocation (Data Cap: e.g. 5 Gb per month) even faster. So what needs 2 or 3 times the speed of 3G? Certainly not most email and average work-related web surfing. But if your network users (on your boat) were to be downloading a lot of something … or streaming videos … they would like 10 Mb/s better than 3 Mb/s. But then again, like I said, that would use your monthly data plan allocation twice or 3 times as fast as well.

“Under a 2 gigabyte data cap, a consumer can watch two high-definition movies or three hours of television on their device before they incur an overage charge, according to Public Knowledge.”

(5 high-definition movies or 7.5 hours of television for a 5 gigabyte data cap plan.)

“Popular, data-intensive iPhone features such as Facetime video chat can consume 3MB per minute, easily increasing data usage to more than 1 gigabyte  or 1,024 megabytes  per month, said Dylan Breslin-Barnhart, a Validas spokesman.”

“The typical well-connected family we think has a good chance of using around 11GB per month.” (And a typical well-connected yacht? Probably about the same.)

* Not to mention that other real-time updating “apps” (or applications programs) can also be data hogs over a period of time. Once on board a yacht I noticed a lot of constant data (Ethernet Network Switch Hub lights blinking constantly) traffic occurring. I tracked it down to an Ipad with a Weather App … enabled for constant updates.

* T-Mobile recently brought back unlimited data plans … and I’ve read that Sprint has this as well. But according to the original cited article … according to the Verizon of the world: “Unlimited data plans are not a sustainable business model for the future… ”

In other words you can sip data at the tap but you can’t gulp it down. Or you can gulp it down – but only for so long – because you will run out. It sounds to me like the cellular carriers still have us drinking at the IPv4 rate … 32 bit (4 Gigabits) , rather than at the Ipv6 rate which is 128 bits (approximately 3.4×10^38.) Yes I know the IPv stuff is in BITS, not BYTES, like when we talk about how many GigaBYTES we get per month. But you get the point. There’s still something wrong with the back-end infrastructure … there’s not enough Gigabits for everyone. There’s not enough to scale up to what the mobile data world has already moved up to. Not at an affordable rate anyway, not with profit margins in mind.